In 2008, Kevin Kelly wrote an essay that changed the direction of my life. It was titled, 1,000 True Fans, and it was an absolutely mind-blowing concept.
You see, before his essay I believed that you needed to get in front of millions of people to make any type of decent money online. After the reading the essay I realized something else.
Even if you did get in front of a million people, only a small percentage would care about what you’re doing.
And this is the premise of the 1,000 True Fans Theory.
Let’s say your goal is to make $100,000 a year (you can vary this number to whatever you want). Then to achieve that you should find 1,000 people who love what you do to pay you $100 a year.
The concept is easy to understand, but the execution is challenging because most people don’t do enough to develop True Fans. They barely do enough to get noticed and that’s a huge problem.
The Pocket Business Framework
There is a framework that we have developed called The Pocket Business Framework. The reason why we developed this framework was because we needed an easy way to assess how well someone is doing in building their business.
The framework is simple.
- Get them to notice you
- Get them to pay attention to you
- Get them to trust you
- Convert that trust into money
That’s all that is needed to create a successful business.
But what does this have to do with 1,000 True Fans? If you spend your time and energy in trying to cultivate these true fans then you’ll make enough money to do whatever you want.
And the reason why is that if you can cater to the people that truly love what you’re doing, others will notice and want to be a part of it. They might not become True Fans, but they’ll still give you money at least once to be a part of something.
How to Get 1,000 True Fans
This all sounds great but how do you make it happen?
It’s important to understand that there are two layers to audience-building.
The first layer involves:
- Outcome
- Problems
- Mechanisms
That means the people you’re trying to attract want the same outcome, have the same problems preventing them from achieving the outcome and are okay with the mechanisms that you use to solve the problems.
For example, if you’re reading this hopefully means you want to make more money but have a problem getting people to notice and pay attention to you.
And if you’re okay with the different mechanisms we teach to make that happen then you pass Layer 1.
What is Layer 2? It’s a bit more nuanced but it comes down to whether you like us or not. This is why most people fall flat in building True Fans.
Looking at Layer 1 you can see that anyone can copy anyone else and this is what happens online so often. One person will see what another person is doing and copy their content strategy and not get the same results.
Why?
They can’t get their potential audience past Layer 2 because they don’t do a great job of sharing their opinions and worldviews so their audience doesn’t have anything to hold onto emotionally.
What do emotions have to do with this?
Emotions Drive Us
The best way to think about it is like this.
There is only one sandwich shop where you live so it’s the one that you go to. It makes sense because there is no other around.
Even though you go in there often, you don’t talk to the people there. You go in, grab your sandwich, and head out.
Until one day, another sandwich shop opens up and it copies everything about the other sandwich shop including the menu and prices.
And it’s the same distance from your home. There is nothing different about this place, that you know of, besides the name.
One day you decide to switch things up and you go into that sandwich shop and you are greeted by the owner. Instead of simply ordering your sandwich and leaving you have a 5-minute conversation with then.
It’s lovely.
The next time you go in, the same thing happens.
In fact, each time you go into the sandwich shop you have a conversation with the owner and you enjoy it. The sandwiches are the exact same. At least they seem like it, but for some reason, the sandwiches at the new place taste better.
Eventually, you stop going to the old place. You even forget that it exists because the new sandwich shop is your home.
All because you like talking to the owner.
Logically, none of this makes sense. One sandwich shop isn’t better than the other, but you know that isn’t true.
You feel better about the new one. And that’s where the confusion occurs with trying to grow an audience online.
We Are Not the Same
The reason why it’s tough to analyze your own marketing is because when you look at it, you view it logically. You’re doing all of the correct steps so things should be working.
But it’s hard for you to see if you’re boring, uncharismatic, not sharing any opinions or worldviews, and in general missing elements that draw people to you.
All you know is that you’re using one of the 37 hooks that Guru F taught you and you’re following the right structure for your video.
And this is the tough thing about building an online business. It’s a different game for the gurus because most of them are in niches where it’s hard not to succeed.
That person teaching you how to grow on Instagram has a lot of followers? Do you wonder why that is?
Because everyone is trying to learn how to grow on Instagram so it makes sense to follow someone who might give you that one tip that you feel will push you over the edge.
But you want to show people how to do puppy training? Not everyone in the world wants to learn that so you need to attract the people that do want to do it and then you have to walk them through Layer 1 and Layer 2 to find success.
Because you aren’t the only person trying to do that.